Come, Let's Speculate

Life is about to seriously transform for those of us working behind scenes here at eSpec Books. With that in mind, this month we want you to tell us your tales of Change in 628 words or less. Deadline: June 30.

Entries should be mailed to especbooks@aol.com as a .doc, .docx, or .rtf attachment. Please include your name, story title, and contact information on your manuscript itself. If we cannot identify your entry from the file you will be disqualified. Multiple submissions are permissible, but reprints are not. Winning entry will be published on the eSpec Books blog and the winner will receive a free ebook copy of the eSpec Books title of their choice. Prize can be reserved for a future book if the winner already has the available titles.

eSB: What challenges did you find editing stories for a pre-existing shared universe?

GS: For me, hardest thing about playing in someone else’s world is making sure everything meshes with, in this case, Hal’s vision. We have brought together some very talented people to play in his world. This being a modified version of our world means that the things we take for granted in our modern need to stay consistent story to story. .

eSB: Can you tell us a little bit about your favorite story or stories from the book and why?

GS: My favorite stories involve the human/animal bonds that form after the second moon appears in the sky.

eSB: Sunrise or stargazing?

GS: Definitely Stargazing

eSB: What other projects have you worked on previously?

GS: Stories in Between from Fantasist Enterprises a collection celebrating the 30th anniversary of my bookstore, Between Books, With Great Power from Dark Quest, The Society for the Preservation of C.J. Henderson, The Side of Good/ The Side of Evil from eSpec Books, Arden House by Rob Bryan

eSB: What projects of your own do you have coming up next?

GS: Most of my time is spent working on projects for eSpec, mostly as a copy editor. There a few things of my own in process but none are close to being finished.

Greg Schauer has been a bookseller for over 33 years as the owner of Between Books in Claymont Delaware. He has also helped produce concerts by local and national bands at the Arden Gild Hall in Arden Delaware, one of the country’s oldest continuously run secular utopian art colonies, for the past 10 years. He has previously worked on Stories in Between: the Between Books 30th anniversary anthology with W.H. Horner and Jeanne Benzel, Steampowered Tales of Awesomeness Vol 1 by Brian Thomas and Ray Witte, With Great Power with John L. French, and The Society for the Preservation of CJ Henderson with Danielle Ackley-McPhail. He can be contacted at gschauer@betweenbooks.com.

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Author Brenda Cooper describes herself as a futurist and as being passionate about the environment, and you’d better believe she’s dead serious about it. Which is to say that, unlike most of the books I’ve gotten to review for Skiffy and Fanty this month, Wilders is many things, but fun isn’t one of them. Like so much ecological science fiction (or ecopunk, if that’s a thing? I’m pretty sure it’s a thing), Wilders is written in deadly earnest. Look elsewhere for lighthearted escapism.

Refreshingly, though, unlike a lot of books I’ve stumbled across in this genre, Wilders manages not to get too preachy. Herein, Cooper works under the assumption that her readers are proficient singers in the choir, and proceeds to focus on telling us a story rather than trying to persuade us that wilderness matters, that the environment matters, that extinction hurts us, etc., etc.

KS: Hal Greenberg’s word is great as it toes the line between full on fantastical elements and real life. The concept of this connection between animal and human or human and the elements/magic breaks the standard mold because it doesn’t go all out. Like a nice blend of super hero and fantasy fiction. In this Modern take it allows for some interesting elements.

eSB:What kind of challenges did you find writing for this series?

KS: Answering some of the questions for our story. What would a gorilla do when it became sentient? How would it act? When technology and magic meet what and how does that work? In real life if this was occurring how would people really react? Answering those and still finding a bit of humor in them was a fun challenge to tackle. But a challenge none-the-less.

eSB:What interested you inwriting forthisseries?

KS: I love writing and Hal and I go way back making it such a pleasure to work together. But what makes it holds my attention, is the Awakening process and the exploration of what would happen when that happens. Exploring not just the what, but later the why is fascinating. Any the fun of slowly seeing so many excellent authors get the ability to cross their characters paths and in unexpected ways in the future adds to the excitement for me.

eSB: If you could have a special power or familiar, what would it be and why?

KS: I would have mind control and/or reading peoples’ thoughts. Basically, Professor X. I love exploring the wonders of what other people are thinking. And to know what is really going on in their heads would likely be terrifying, but also would unlock more for me on the human condition. Something I enjoy exploring. We humans are interesting creatures. But our minds and our souls, or just the concept of those souls, is intriguing to me. I think that power would help me develop a better understanding. Maybe in the long term also help people who want to change destructive behavior. LOL. So apparently, I want to be a superhero psychologist.

eSB: Sunrise or stargazing?

KS: Stargazing.

eSB: What projects of your own do you have coming up?

KS: I work with Hal at a company called Samurai Sheepdog and am in charge of board game design and development. I have a number of projects in the works both with and without Samurai involvement. Tournament of Camelot is a fun easy, trick taking card game with the sotyr text derived directly from the original text in the Library of London on the Arthurian legend. I also uses a “Catch up” mechanic which makes it fun for experienced players to play with casual players because the worse you’re doing the more fun stuff you get! Also have a game with Wizkids call The Witching Hour coming out at GENCON in which you play a team of Witches who are part of Coven. One of you has done something bad with their magic and demons manifest to try and take all your souls. While 100% cooperative, everything you do to help yourself, hurts another player! Games farther in the distance include Ettin, a game which can play 2-100+ people (16 per box) and Beyond the Edge, a massive Space game which has a growing list of amazing authors working on it including Richard Lee Byers and Ed Greenwood! Both of those should arrive in 2018.

Born in West Palm Beach Florida, Kenneth Shannon (aka Ken) is a veteran game designer who has designed and written for board games such as Tournament at Camelot and Approaching Dawn: The Witching Hour as well as award nominated RPGs. He is currently lead designer on Adventure IN, a principal designer for Fall of Man, writing for the Awakened II, Awakened III and Awakened Modern, and has a candy-coated assortment of other projects. Since his start 12 years ago in the industry, he has edited and/or written for Mystic Eye Games, Thunderhead Games, Bastion Press and more recently for Samurai Sheepdog.

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Here is the cover for The Awakened Modern, which is currently funding on Kickstarter.

The sudden appearance of a second moon in Earth’s sky awakens latent abilities in humanity…a link to a familiar, control of the elements, and so much more becomes possible as the second moon takes effect. What impact will this sudden change have on society? Only time will tell.

About the Artist – Jhoneil Centeno is a Los Angeles based artist. A graduate of the renowned Art Center College of Design, he primarily works in digital media but recently found a new enthusiasm in working with oil paint again. His paintings have been featured in numerous books, galleries, and websites. In his spare time, he plays the ukulele badly, takes pictures of random things, and explores LA’s diverse food culture. He loves all things archery, specially the Asian variety and can hit an apple consistently at 20 yards using a traditional recurve bow. “My work explores the relationship between the body and romance tourism. With influences as diverse as Rousseau and Sriracha Marconi, new combinations are created from both traditional and modern textures. Ever since I was a student I have been fascinated by the unrelenting divergence of the mind. What starts out as triumph soon becomes manipulated into a carnival of lust, leaving only a sense of dread and the dawn of a new synthesis. As shimmering derivatives become transformed through studious and diverse practice, the viewer is left with a testament to the possibilities of our world.” His website is http://www.jhoneil.com/.

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eSpec Books interviews Torah Cottrill, contributor to The Awakened Modern, edited by Hal Greenberg and Greg Schauer, which is currently funding on Kickstarter.

eSB: Can you tell us a little about your story, Return of the Devis, from The Awakened Modern?

TC: When Hal Greenberg first suggested that we bring the premise of The Awakened into the 21st century, I wondered how people in the developing world, without access to 24-hour media coverage and with much different cultural lenses, would think about the sudden appearance of individuals with powers. Would they seem like gods, or monsters? Once I found my protagonist, a child with little formal education or knowledge about the world beyond her village, a girl too young for powers, I had a way to tell a story about what watching the world around you blossom with the Awakened might be like, a view from below the clash of powers.

eSB: What do you like most about The Awakened series, and why?

TC: One of the first things that excited me about the series was the fantastic roster of authors already on board. Who wouldn’t want to contribute to an anthology featuring writers like Jaleigh Johnson, Ed Greenwood, and Rosemary Jones? But the aspect of the series that continues to draw me in is the flexibility of the setting, and the number of different stories you can tell about what having a difficult gift, a power, feels like, and how it affects your life and the lives of the people around you.

eSB: What interested you in writing for this series?

TC: With the potential to write a story about characters who have superhuman powers, it’s easy to find yourself writing about spectacular clashes between Awakened, to turn a story into a series of bigger and bigger confrontations, until you’ve turned your story into a series of mind-blowing CGI fights! Those are a lot of fun to write, so part of the challenge of writing for this series is to bring the story back to the characters’ internal conflicts, the struggle to know and understand yourself. I do really enjoy those glorious wuxia ballet fight scenes, though.

eSB: Do you have any plans to expand your story…or write in the same universe? If so, what more can your readers expect?

TC: My stories in Awakened I and II follow one young woman through her awakening in the Frozen Wastes through her impressment into (and escape from) King Stewart’s forces in his push to conquer the Open Lands. Right now, I’m working on a story for Awakened III that explores the cost of using your power in war and the idea that sometimes a power can be more burden than gift.

eSB: If you could have a special power or familiar, what would it be and why?

TC: I’d like to be able to slow time, so I could get everything done in a day that I intend to. Wouldn’t we all?

Torah Cottrill is a professional editor and amateur video gamer whose short stories have appeared in Stupefying Stories, Luna Station Quarterly, Ares Magazine, and Tokyo Yazuka, among other publications. She wastes her free time researching hand-to-hand combat techniques for her novel and failing to complete the seasonal set dungeons in Diablo III.